Planning for the Greater Manchester ‘A Better Start’ bid has begun in earnest. Researchers commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund have been undertaking well-being surveys with 3,000 families across Greater Manchester, focusing on the challenges faced by families and children. This will help form the evidence base for the Greater Manchester bid.
Community Partnership
Simultaneously, as part of the bid team, Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Organisations (GMCVO) and The Innovation Unit have been working with respective local authority and community-based organisations to set up and deliver community engagement events. These started on 6 November and will continue until the end of the month taking place in the specific wards: Moss Side (Manchester), Langworthy (Salford), Farnworth (Bolton), Coldhurst (Oldham) and Milkstone and Deeplish (Rochdale).
The community partnership approach involves different elements including interviews with parents, frontline professionals and representatives from local voluntary and community groups. Details of the events are available from Beth Sharratt at GMCVO: [email protected].
GMCVO will also be working on developing ‘community asset mapping’ profiles of each of the wards and have already been in contact with local voluntary and community organisations about this and what is required. Ultimately, for the Greater Manchester bid to be successful, a rich, robust and realistic view of life in each of the wards from the perspective of early years and child development needs to be presented.
This process of engagement will culminate in a major two day strategy event on 16 and 17 December. The key groups attending this will be parents with young children from the five wards as well as colleagues from statutory services, health and the voluntary sector. The event will be critical to how the Greater Manchester bid develops, with the outcome being the production of strategy for A Better Start that can be adopted across the five participating wards, and that ties in with the wider Greater Manchester Early Years Strategy.
In addition to the strategy days, the Big Lottery Fund's partner, the Social Research Unit at Dartington - who are providing support to all 15 final stage bidders - will be visiting Children’s Centres in Langworthy and Milkstone and Deeplish later in November also to discuss child development with parents and staff.
Bid Deadline Extended
Finally and critically, the need for proper engagement and partnership-building has been one of the reasons why Big Lottery Fund has agreed to extend the bid submission deadline until 28 February 2014 - originally it was early January. This has been strongly welcomed by the Greater Manchester bid team as it allows more time to strengthen the community engagement and partnership aspects of the bid.
If you have any questions or comments, email The Children's Society's development lead for the bid, Mike Rees, at: [email protected].